Utah Task Force Investigates Child Porn On Pinterest

Pinterest, the aspirational, consumer-oriented social network that was quickly adopted by Midwestern moms and Mormons, is facing the same vile problem as other almost every other platform before it. Utah's Internet Crimes Against Children task force is currently investigating "12 separate cases of users posting child pornography on Pinterest boards," according to the Deseret News.

"People have actually posted on Pinterest — on non-password protected pages — actual images that are known child pornography ... and put that out there saying, 'Hey, this is what my hobby is,'" said ICAC head Ken Wallentine. "Essentially, it's fishing for other images: 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours, and by the way, here's mine right up front.'"

Utah investigators sounded dumbfounded by the cases, which were brought to their attention by Pinterest officials:

"We were incredibly surprised," said Utah Internet Crimes Against Children task force field commander Patty Reed. "We all thought Pinterest was a place to go post your recipes or their decorating ideas. So we were incredibly surprised to find out people were also using it to pin child pornography and share child pornography."

Earlier this week, Pinterest said it would open the network up to more nudity to "try to accommodate" artists and photographers who objected to its rigid policies—even as Facebook was promising better online moderation in order to appease advertisers.

We've reached out to Pinterest for comment and will update the post when we hear back. According to Desert News, the task force said "Pinterest employees were taking an 'honorable pro-active' approach to monitoring the activity of others."

In terms of process, we report potentially illegal content to theNational Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). They decide the right law enforcement agency to which the content should besent. This is the way it works with every user-generated content site. I encourage you to contact NCMEC for more info: Email: media@ncmec.org Media Line: 703-837-6111

And offered the following statement:

The vast majority of activity on Pinterest is positive and constructive but we have zero tolerance for any child exploitation. We actively search the site for offending content, report it to lawenforcement, and help prosecute those responsible.